🇲🇺 Government scraps the plan to double tax on foreign property buyers

Government scraps the plan to double tax on foreign property buyers

A tax that was about to double, from 5% to 10%, on foreigners buying homes here will now not take effect at all. The government has walked back the hike that the last Budget wrote in for foreign buyers under Economic Development Board schemes, the arms of the state that court overseas money into local bricks and land.

Both duties were set to climb to 10%: the registration duty a buyer pays, and the Land Transfer Tax a seller pays. The measure had targeted homes and apartments sold through EDB programmes, the ones marketed to non-citizens. Slipped into the Finance Bill 2026, the reversal kills the increase before a single rupee was ever collected under it.

Coastal land is loaded. Property near the sea is where much of this plays out, and it carries political weight far past its price tag. So the real question sits underneath the numbers: who pushed for the climbdown, and what does the Treasury give up when every rupee of revenue is already spoken for.

Four from one family held at Plaisance over money laundering

Rs 1.5 million in cash, four relatives, one stop at Plaisance. Police held four members of the same family, two of them women, aged between 25 and 49, on Thursday as they passed through the airport on suspicion of money laundering. Airports see bigger sums. Four from one household, moving together, is the detail that stands out.

The notes were counted and seized on the spot, the family insists the money is clean. What turns a family trip into a laundering file is where all that cash came from, and that link is the part investigators still have to prove.

President says the residence security bill is not his call

President Gokhool wants one thing clear: the Rs 20.3 million security upgrade to his private home was not his decision. That call, President Gokhool says, belongs entirely to the Prime Minister's Office.

He puts the online storm down to free speech outrunning the facts, the row has run hot for days. Fair enough on who signed off. A bill that size on one private residence is still a question someone in government has to own.

Islamic Cultural Centre chairman quits after the Hadj report

Political pressure forced out Shamad Ayoob Saab, chairman of the Islamic Cultural Centre, who resigned on Thursday once the 2026 Hadj report landed. Minister Shakeel Mohamed says figures elected and unelected leaned on him. The report named the friction. The resignation is the first thing to actually move.

A new Rs 10 billion motorway rides on a USD 680 million loan

A 30 kilometre motorway will link Forbach in the north to Bel-Air in the east, at a cost near Rs 10 billion. The bill is carried by a special USD 680 million loan from the Indian government, and the route swings wide of Poudre-d'Or. Big road, borrowed money. The payback runs long after the ribbon is cut.

Shorts

Commonwealth medallists get their cash rewards – Government hands cash rewards to 75-strong Commonwealth team and its coaches.

CEB gifts 1,000 solar kits to poorer homes – The CEB will hand 1,000 solar kits to vulnerable households at an Ebene ceremony on 12 August.

150 stun guns caught at the port – Customs anti-narcotics officers seized 150 tasers that had slipped through the port.

Balaclava beach body is identified – Police have named the man found partly burned on Balaclava beach on Thursday.

Ebola quarantine stretched by a month – Cabinet extended the Ebola-risk quarantine by a further month on Friday.

579

mobile phones have surfaced behind prison walls since November 2024, a tally PM Ramgoolam gave Parliament after Adrien Duval pressed for a figure.

Rs 850,000

a month will go to Raja Ramdaursingh to run the Economic Development Board, at least Rs 13.6 million a year, a package laid before Parliament after a written question.

$942 million

the record penalty a New Mexico judge dropped on Meta for failing to shield children online, branding the platform a public nuisance no better than a polluting factory.

Senegal jails three TikTok influencers over posts on President Faye

A Senegalese court has jailed three TikTok influencers for posts it ruled insulted President Bassirou Diomaye Faye. The sentences turn ordinary online criticism into prison time.

President Faye rode a wave of young voters into office, so jailing young critics online cuts against the story he ran on. For a region that long watched Senegal as a democratic bright spot, that is a sharp line to cross.

Ghana's inflation cools again as food prices fall

Ghana's inflation eased to 4.6% in July, down from 5.3% a month earlier, as food prices fell.

World Court sets the clock on DR Congo's case against Rwanda

The World Court set a timetable for DR Congo's case accusing Rwanda: Kinshasa files by October 2027, Kigali replies by December 2028.

Trump moves to fire a Fed governor, testing its independence

President Trump is trying to remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook over mortgage fraud claims, a step that could reopen a legal fight over the central bank's independence. Markets read a president leaning on the Fed as a signal about who really sets interest rates. That is why one governor's job is suddenly everyone's business.

US Senate backs sweeping new sanctions on Russia

The US Senate passed the Graham sanctions bill, targeting Russia and the buyers of its oil to choke the revenue that funds its war.

Ex-governor arrested over Mexico's 43 vanished students

Mexico has arrested a former governor of Guerrero, accused of burying evidence in the 2014 disappearance of 43 students that still haunts the country.

The White House ballroom that needs Congress first

How do you spend $400 million on a White House ballroom? Not on a whim, a federal appeals court just ruled. President Trump must get Congress to sign off before the gilt goes up.

A ballroom is a small thing next to a budget fight. Yet it lands on the same principle: even the house at the top answers to the people who hold the purse.

🙏 Merci, à demain! 👋

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